Crossing boundaries: The role of universities in unlocking regional development

Atkinson, D (2011), “Crossing boundaries: The role of universities in unlocking regional development”, Inaugural lecture, University of the Free State.

This presentation is about making connections and crossing boundaries.

When I read EM Forster’s books at the age of 19, his philosophy of Only Connect made an enormous impression on me. In 1924, EM Forster wrote his landmark novel, A Passage to India. This is a fascinating contrast between the mindsets of Christians, Muslims and Hindus, in a multi-cultural and unstable social setting. For Forster, the social attitudes of the Christians and Muslims remain limited and constrained by their faiths. Social boundaries remained difficult to cross.